Books by Gary Graybill

Thursday, August 22, 2013

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

It’s time for another dive into the news stories that, well,
you just can’t make this stuff up…

In June, following his guilty plea in Corpus Christi, Texas,
to possession of child pornography, Jose Salazar, 70, offered to perform public
service to reduce the 12-year sentence a federal judge had handed him. Salazar
said he "had a lot to offer society," and could be "useful"
--in mentoring children.

Tina Marie Garrison, 37, and her son Junior Lee Dillon, 18,
of Preston, Minn., were charged with
stealing almost $5,000 worth of gopher feet from the freezer of a gopher
trapper in Granger, Minn., and selling them for the local offered bounty of $3
per pair. [I killed a gopher once. It was destroying my Mom's garden. --It was self defense, your honor. When my "No Trespassing" signs didn't work I confronted him in person and he pulled a gun on me.]

The governor of Gorontalo province in Indonesia
decreed that female secretaries should be replaced immediately with males. He
was responding to the excessive number of extramarital affairs by male
bureaucrats with their female secretaries. ("Old women who are no longer
attractive" could be hired, he said.)

Gerard Streator, 47, pleaded to public lewdness and placed
on probation after his arrest for going through the motions of intercourse with
a discarded couch on a public street. An off-duty police officer thought
initially that he had caught a couple, but on closer inspection, he realized
Streator (who was aroused) was alone. [I hear a Chinese company bought the couch to copy and market]

In Ostersund, Sweden, a 35-year-old man was arrested after a
surveillance camera revealed him to be the one who repeatedly punctured Per
Edstrom's bicycle's tires and who was then seen sitting on the bicycle
pleasuring himself.

When Alcoa, Inc., prepared to build an aluminum smelting
plant in Iceland, the government forced it to hire an expert to assure
that none of the country's legendary "hidden people" lived underneath
the property. The elf-like goblins provoke genuine apprehensiveness in many of
the country's 300,000 natives (who are all, reputedly, related by blood). An
Alcoa spokesman said that the inspection (which delayed construction for six
months) was necessary: "We couldn't be in the position of acknowledging
the existence of hidden people."

There are more, lots more, this is a really crazy rock we
live on, but I’ll stop for now and give you time for the aspirin to work…